FOOD GLORIOUS FOOD!
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CHOW CHOICES
a listing of Filipino restaurants

CENDRILLON
45 Mercer Street (in SOHO)
New York, NY 10013
A fusion of Filipino and French cuisines.  This little restaurant fits right in its SOHO location.  Try the banana-leaf-broiled fish.  Comme dessert, definitely have their buko pie and their version of halo-halo.

ELVIE'S  TURO-TURO
214 First Ave (12th/13th Sts.)
New York, NY 10009
Turo-turo means "point-point".  It's as easy as that.  You find what you like in the buffet, point, and eat.  What's great are the prices, which is why this place is popular among all New Yorkers. 

IHAWAN

40-06 70th Street
Woodside, NY 11377
This restaurant is dubbed as the "home of the best barbeque in town."  Go here for great lechon.

KRYSTAL'S CAFE
69-02 Roosevelt Avenue
Woodside, NY 11377
While eating at this restaurant you can't help but stare at the Filipino pastries that are on display.  Do not hold back--indulge!!!  Also try their fresh lumpia as an appetizer, it's as good as it gets.

MANILA GARDEN
325 E 14th Street (1st Ave) New York, NY 10003
If you're in the mood for OPM (Original Pilipino Music), this is the restaurant for you.  And if you're not shy, you can sing and annoy other patrons.

RITZ LAUREN
537 Ninth Ave (39th/40th Sts.) New York, NY 10018
Casual and affordable.  No dog served here. 

HISTORY OF FILIPINO CUISINE
excerpted from Katutubong Pinoy 
(http://www.geocities.com/NapaValley/6065/history.htm)

More than 300 years ago, long before Spanish conquistadors staggered down their ships to kiss the shores of the islands, Filipinos were rowing out to sea in their little bancas, wading knee-deep in rice paddies, planting in their backyards and hunting in the woods. Whatever they gathered and caught they simply roasted, boiled or broiled over an open fire. The forests were abundant and the surrounding waters teeming with life; the Filipinos' idea of food included everything nature had to offer. Preferably seafood. Preferably fresh. Squirming, leaping, crawling-out-of-the-cooking-pot fresh.

Foreign trade during those times was healthy and a good deal less complicated than today. The Malaysians, Indonesians, Arabians, Indians, and Chinese brought all sorts of spices and food plants to the islands. Some of them stayed and raised families here, and handed down cooking methods which the natives used to improve their own methods.

Filipino cuisine is much like the Filipino himself: a mixture of different cultures, Eastern and Western, that forms one unique culture that is like yet unlike those that preceded it. Throughout the centuries foreigners came, as traders or conquerors, and brought with them their tastes and cooking styles, which the Filipinos adapted to their own essentially Malayan cuisine.

THE CHINESE INFLUENCE
From the Chinese we have the whole noodle business: pancit miki, pancit bihon, pancit Canton, pancit sotanghon. But the Filipinos have completely imbued the dishes with their own flair, and now there is a different kind of pancit for almost every region on the Philippines. Other Chinese-inspired dishes, such as lumpia, kikiam, siopao, and siomai, have been absorbed into the Filipino way of life. They are part of Filipino diet, even today.

THE SPANISH INFLUENCE
Three hundred years of preparing dinner for Mother Spain gave us a flair for rich food, the way Europeans prepare it. Stews such as the cocido and puchero, rice-meat dishes and elaborate desserts such as brazos, and tortas imperiales are generally considered fiesta food, and most often found on the dining tables of the upper classes.

THE AMERICAN INFLUENCE
Sure, they brought us kitchen conveniences like the refrigerator, the pressure cooker, the oven toaster and the microwave. They also gave us burgers, salads, and pies which we baked with native fruits. But though we absorbed so much of their culture in their 50-year colonization, American cooking is only now becoming part of Philippine cuisine. Through their fast-food joints, we indirectly tasted spaghetti and pizza. But somehow we wanted these to taste sweet, not sour as the Italians intended them to be.

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